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Old Computers, archaeology etc ..



Dear all,

Thought I would follow up the recent posting about how much work we all have
to do in telling people about digital archiving.

The Archaeology Data Service recently was sent a box load of about 250 or so
3.5 disks from the Newham Museum Archaeological Service, a local authority
archaeology service that has recently been closed down.  The ADS, as part of
the Arts and Humanities Data Service, is committed to the long term
preservation of digital data produced by archaeological research, it seeks
to raise awareness of the issues involved, and to provide guidance for good
standards in that field.  It was thus, somewhat inevitable that an orphaned
collection like this should turn up at our doorstep some day.  The task of
archiving this data came with no financial support, so we decided that we
would undertake the work as a case study in such archiving, with a view to
alerting people of the dangers and problems.

Now that the migration and archiving is complete, we want to use this as an
opportunity to tell the world about the problems involved.  The good news is
that the data has indeed been migrated to "new media", and the ADS has a
long term strategy of migration and refreshment.  (The ADS is not a Global
Museum and wouldn't want to be!)  We do want to raise awareness and are all
to aware of the problems. Indeed the BBC's spin on the story (that things
are safe because they are on the Internet) just shows how much work we still
have to do!

If you want to find out more about the ADS, then point your browser at
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/
...where you will find links to the original press release and our
on-going research in digital archiving for archaeology.

All best wishes,

William

William Kilbride
User Services Manager
Archaeology Data Service
help@ads.ahds.ac.uk
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/

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